When a car is driving up a hill, is the friction between the tires and the ground static friction or kinetic friction?
Asked by:
Weiyin He
Answer
If you are not spinning your wheels on the pavement, it is static friction between the tire and ground. If the wheels start spinning, it is kinetic friction.
Since static friction provides a greater frictional force than kinetic friction, spinning tires should be avoided. That is the theory behind ABS braking, and why you shouldn't just spin your tires faster when trying to move on slippery pavement.
Answered by:
Paul Walorski, B.A., Part-time Physics/Astronomy Instructor
'The strength and weakness of physicists is that we believe in what we can measure. And if we can't measure it, then we say it probably doesn't exist. And that closes us off to an enormous amount of phenomena that we may not be able to measure because they only happened once. For example, the Big Bang. ... That's one reason why they scoffed at higher dimensions for so many years. Now we realize that there's no alternative... '